Don't Turn Over Emergency Response to the Military

(White House photo by Eric Draper)
According to news reports, President Bush is considering turning over emergency response to the Pentagon.

It's a bad idea, and it will just make matters worse.

Leave aside the constitutional problems. The major flaw is that such a responsibility overburdens a military already stretched to the limit in Iraq and Afghanistan. Simply put, there aren't enough troops to do the job--and if there were, it would hurt America's ability to respond to terrorist or other military attacks.

So, even if passed, it would not work.

But more than that, it shows that Bush is in desperation mode--unable to govern democratically, he seeks to resort to military solutions to domestic problems. That he's even thinking this way, it seems to me, is evidence that he has "lost it."

The US had dealt with flood, fire, hurricane, earthquake, and myriad natural calamities for hundreds of years without turning into a military dictatorship. If Bush can't find civilian solutions to civil problems--he ought to resign.

The Opening of the American Mind

I had seen the ads for taped lectures from The Teaching Company, and a few years before had met Alan Kors, who recorded a series of lectures on Voltaire, but until dinner last Friday with a professor who had come to tape a series of talks on Russian Literature, I didn't know much about the operation. Turns out they have their own recording studio, and the people involved appear to be knowledgeable and dedicated. My dinner companion said he had enjoyed the experience.

Suddenly, it seemed less like a kitschy mail-order self-improvement great books thing, and more like a serious effort to spread learning, while making some money at the same time. The company was founded by Thomas Rollins, former chief counsel for the Senate Labor and Human Resources committee. He felt teaching was undervalued, and wanted to do something to promote great university teaching. Well, as a teacher, I certainly agree with that mission.

To judge from the website, he's done what he set out to do. Here's an excerpt from Philip Daileader's lecture on the state of universities in the High Middle Ages, relevant to a lot of us adjuncts and part-timers today:

Although all universities were founded for more or less the same reasons, nonetheless, two different types of universities emerged in the High Middle Ages. Paris and Bologna were rather different institutions, in many respects. They were different in terms of their academic specialties, and they were different in terms of their structures.

Paris was best known for theology. Bologna was best known for its law faculty, especially its civil law and secular law courses. The differences in structure often reflected these differences in academic specialization. The University of Paris was run by the teachers, magister, or "master," in the singular, magistri in the plural, whereas the University of Bologna was run by the students, not by the faculty. All medieval universities followed one of these two models, either the master-dominated University of Paris, or the student-dominated University of Bologna.

The reason for these different structures was the manner in which teachers were paid. Theoretically, no teacher was ever supposed to charge money, or demand money for teaching. All teaching should have been done for free, because knowledge was God's gift to humanity, and for a human being to charge money for that which was actually God's, was presumptuous. The teacher was to rely solely on gifts, freely given by students out of gratitude for the fact that teachers had shared God's knowledge with them. In practice, this was a highly unsatisfactory system of remunerating teachers; one who had to show up in class, and pray that someone gave him an apple, so that he could eat that day, and different sorts of arrangements had to be reached, whereby teachers could feed themselves.

In Paris, because it was so strong in theology, and the theology faculty really dominated the university, most teachers were supported by the Church. They were given salaries, called benefices, that they were able to live off of. Because the teachers in Paris, for the most part, did not have to rely on student gifts, but rather, were paid by the Church, they were free of student control, and were able to run the university as they saw fit.

At Bologna, with its strength in the law faculty, especially in secular law and in civil law, teachers had to rely on student fees directly for their livelihood, and since students were paying their salaries, students got to run the university. Indeed, modern teachers can only shudder with horror when they see the consequences for the poor faculty members at the University of Bologna. If you had been a master teaching at the University of Bologna, and you wanted to leave town for any reason, a getaway weekend, etc., you had to post bond with the students, guaranteeing that you were going to return to the University of Bologna, and actually teach your classes.

Teachers were fined for all sorts of infractions by the student body; I hope they don't see this tape. If you failed to attract five students to your class on any given day, you, the teacher, were marked as absent, because you had failed to gather a quorum, and you were fined for having been absent, even though you had been physically present. If you failed to keep pace with the syllabus, and you fell behind on your lecturing schedule, that, too, was a fine that you had to pay. If you were late for class, well, that was also a fine. It could be rather lucrative to be a student at the University of Bologna.

The manner in which the master's salary was negotiated at Bologna also seems rather odd today. At the beginning of an academic semester, during the first meeting of class, you as the master would choose one student from the class, a student whom you trusted. That student was given the responsibility of negotiating your fee for that semester with the student body. You, then, had to exit the room and sit outside anxiously, while the student, on your behalf, talked with the other students about how much you were actually worth. Given the fact that the student negotiating your fee had to pay whatever fee was negotiated, the results were not always that lucrative from the master's point of view. If you as a master had a choice between an appointment at the University of Paris, or the University of Bologna, well, that was a no-brainer. You wanted to go teach at Paris.

Perhaps when the history of teaching is taught a few centuries from now, a professor will cite the Teaching Company as an alternative to Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind...

UPDATE: Here's an article on the subject from The Chronicle of Higher Education

A Russian Blog From New Orleans

It's called SpeakRussian, hosted by Natalia Worthington, whom I discovered by looking for Russian podcasts. On her site, or via podcast, you can hear her impressions of Hurricane Katrina and the flood, as well as pick up a few Russian words...

Human Rights Watch Report: 82nd Airborne Tortured Prisoners

After looking at this report, I thought, the US has no right whatsoever to complain about any other country's treatment of prisoners--until we have cleaned up our own act...

London Mayor Advocates Terrorism

Making comparisons to partisans who fought the Nazis, London Mayor Ken Livingtone has called for the death of Uzbekistan's president, according to The Washington Times:

"But what do you say today to someone in Uzbekistan, where you have a monstrous and oppressive regime, which casually dismisses the lives of its people, a corrupt regime hanging onto power?"
Referring to demonstrations in Uzbekistan this year during which security forces opened fire on civilian protesters, he asked: "What option is there for someone who wants to see freedom, justice and democracy in Uzbekistan, other than to remove from power the people that keep that country in the grip of dictatorship?
"I see no way other than through the assassin's bullet or the assassin's bomb."

IMHO this comment is an on-the-record statement of what many in the NGO and Western crowd believe but will not say on-the-record. They are on the side of the terrorists--despite the obvious fact that the terrorists are sworn enemies of the West and the USA; who perpetrate the most horrific atrocities, who have an ideological and religious commitment to a goal that equally horrific; despite the evidence that they will ruthlessly carry out their plans if they ever achieve power, not shrinking from the extermination of their allies of the moment--as happened in Iran.

Livingstone says he knows of anti-Nazis who killed Nazis, and that was OK, not terrorism. Well, Livingstone should realize that Uzbekistan -- as part of the USSR -- was as anti-Nazi as anyone during WWII. And, the same sort of Islamist groups that now issue fatwas against Karimov--and the USA, Russia, Israel, India, Britain and even Denmark-- fought with the SS for Hitler. Ideologically, historically, and tactically, the Andijan "insurgents" are Nazis.

Incredibly, the Mayor of London made issued his fatwa against Karimov even after bombers linked to the same Islamist extremist groups responsible for the Andijan uprising created havoc in London on July 7th, 2005. In the end, Livingstone's statement goes beyond appeasement, "objectively" (to use a Marxist term that 'Red Ken" surely understands) siding with fascism and Nazism, as well as terrorism.

If Karimov is a legitimate target, why not Bush, Blair, or someday perhaps, Livingstone himself?

What if they gave an antiwar rally and nobody came?

Asks Little Green Footballs today. We were down near the mall--and there was practically no one on the side streets--no traffic, no crowds. Whatever the body count, it was a non-event. Except for the mainstream media, probably. The real news is that people aren't mad enough to take to the streets (yet).

If you don't believe me, here's a photo from EU Rota on LGF.

The low turnout doesn't mean the American public likes the present situation in Iraq, just that they like what the antiwar crowd is offering a whole lot less. A more hawkish Democratic party would probably sweep the next elections, IMHO...

Michael Ledeen: Bush Fails Iran Test

From National Review:

Our policymakers have thus far utterly failed to design anything worthy of the name of an Iran policy, even though it is arguably the single most important challenge we face. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley recently answered a question about Iran policy by saying that we did indeed have a policy, but we hadn’t yet written it down. This is reminiscent of the old riddle of whether a falling tree makes a sound if no one is there to hear it: can there be a policy if nobody can define it?

Lacking any defined policy, we can only judge the president and his aides by their actions, and there aren’t any, aside from the occasional speech or offhand remark at a press conference. The mullahs see that, and treat it with the contempt it deserves. We are currently indistinguishable from the Europeans, who run whenever the Iranians snarl at them.

This is not a war on terror, it is paralysis at best, and appeasement at worst. The hell of it is that it is costing thousands of lives, and will cost many more until the terror masters are destroyed, or we surrender. Those words were inconceivable for many years, but it is a sign of our present fecklessness that they are now entirely appropriate. We can still lose this war. And we cannot win it so long as we are blinded by our potentially fatal failure of strategic vision: we are in a regional war, but we have limited our actions to a single theater. Our most potent weapons are political and ideological, but our actions have been almost exclusively military.

Our main enemy, the single greatest engine in support of the terror war against us, whether Sunni or Shiite, jihadi, or secular, Arab or British or Italian or Spaniard, is Iran. There is no escape from this fact. The only questions are how long it will take us to face it, how effective we will be when we finally decide to act, and how terrible the price will be for our long delay.

Ann Coulter Doesn't Want Roberts

Ann Coulter thinks Roberts is the wrong choice for Chief Justice.

For Christians, it's "What Would Jesus Do?" For Republicans, it's "What Would Reagan Do?" Bush doesn't have to be Reagan; he just has to consult his WWRD bracelet. If Bush had followed the WWRD guidelines, he would have nominated Antonin Scalia for the chief justiceship.

As proof, I refer you to the evidence. When Reagan had an opening for chief justice, he nominated Associate Justice William Rehnquist. While liberals were preoccupied staging die-ins against Rehnquist and accusing him of chasing black people away from the polls with a stick — something they did not accuse Roberts of — Reagan slipped Scalia onto the court.

That's what Reaganesque presidents with a five-vote margin in the Senate typically do. Apart from toppling the Soviet Empire, Scalia remains Reagan's greatest triumph.

Scalia deserved the chief justiceship. He's the best man for the job. He has suffered lo these many years with Justices Souter, Kennedy and O'Connor. He believes in a sedentary judiciary. He's for judicial passivism. Scalia also would have been the first cigar-smoking, hot-blooded Italian chief justice, which I note the diversity crowd never mentions.

Bull Moose: "God Bless Texas"

The Bull Moose talks Texan about Hurricane Rita--and Texas politics. Right now, musician Kinky Friedman is leading all other candidates in the race for Governor...

Something to think about...

Giuliani Backs Sharon

Hizzoner is in Israel on a visit. He had this to say, according to Haaretz:

Former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who is in Israel as the keynote speaker for today's Ness Technologies seminar, said yesterday that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's efforts to implement the disengagement were a sign of his patriotism. Giuliani said Sharon reminds him of baseball superstar Babe Ruth.

Just like Ruth - but unlike younger leaders like Sharon's party rival Benjamin Netanyahu, whom Giuliani also praised - Sharon has been proving his ability for many years, during which he always placed the state before himself, the former mayor said.

Senator Clinton Will Vote Against Roberts

Although Clinton says she expects Roberts to be confirmed, her protest statement is strong, and might help to deny him the 2/3 of the Senate necessary:

"After serious and careful consideration of the Committee proceedings and Judge Roberts’s writings, I believe I must vote against his confirmation. I do not believe that the Judge has presented his views with enough clarity and specificity for me to in good conscience cast a vote on his behalf...I have an obligation to my constituents to make sure that I cast my vote for Chief Justice of the United States for someone I am convinced will be steadfast in protecting fundamental women’s rights, civil rights, privacy rights, and who will respect the appropriate separation of powers among the three branches. After the Judiciary Hearings, I believe the record on these matters has been left unclear. That uncertainly means as a matter of conscience, I cannot vote to confirm,,, I cannot give my consent to his confirmation and will, therefore, vote against his confirmation. My desire to maintain the already fragile Supreme Court majority for civil rights, voting rights and women’s rights outweigh the respect I have for Judge Roberts’s intellect, character, and legal skills."

Enough about Russia...

Here's The Scotsman on Hurricane Rita...

Russia Starts International TV Channel

In English, it's called "Russia Today." But unlike the BBC World Service, it's not about the World, it's about Russia. Maybe they should think again, and call it "The World Today" on the Russian Broadcasting Corporation World Service... They already are using British anchors! (Think again, Vladimir Vladimirovich, about using some on-air talent from Kansas, Nebraska, and Illinois).

Putin to Host Call-In TV Show

I watched Putin's call-in TV show when I lived in Tashkent in 2002. It was sort of a Christmas special, for what the Russians call "Novi God." Like Santa, Putin was making a list of who had been naughty and who had been nice.

It was just fascinating. We have nothing like it in the US. And I doubt George W. Bush's could pull off something like this. I wish we had something like it in the US. Putin sits at a table, with a file folder full of papers, and answers questions like a good government official should.

As in past years, the call-in show will be broadcast on state-run Channel One and Rossia television as well as on state-owned Mayak radio. Television cameras will be set up in cities across the country so that people "will get the chance to ask their president a question live" on the air, the Kremlin spokeswoman said.

In addition, the presidential administration is again opening a call center to collect additional questions and it will also be accepting questions by e-mail, she said.

A total of 1.53 million questions were submitted to the broadcast in 2003. Putin answered 68 over 2 1/2 hours.

Then, Putin cancelled the show last year while I was living in Moscow (his popularity was dropping). Now that he's at 70 percent public approval in the polls, maybe he feels more confident.

Not all the questions were friendly in 2002. People were concerned about their pensions and unpaid salaries, and not shy about it. There was even a question about bringing back the Tsar (Answer: Nyet!).

It is a cross between C-SPAN and a local "Ask the Mayor." There is also the idea that the unanswered questions might be forwarded to the right government bureaucrat for action. Two journalists, video hookups (one from a Russian military base Tajikistan), phone calls. For hours. Afterwards, almost all my Uzbek students who saw it were impressed by Putin (it was shown on Russian cable TV). So was I.

A Russian-American Alliance? (cont'd)

RIA-Novosti reports that the American and Russian armies are planning joint military exercises for next year. Maybe Bush and Putin did agree on something?

Senate Hears Able Danger Testimony

I was listening to C-SPAN radio in the car this morning, and heard some just fascinating testimony from Congressman Curt Weldon about "Able Danger" at this Senate hearing, chaired by Senator Arlen Specter. Senator Grassley came on and made a strong statement, basically "give 'em hell," which which Specter chose to associate himself. Here's a sample of what Weldon had to say:

It was during the briefings on Able Providence that I was provided additional information about Able Danger. I was told that Able Danger had amassed significant data about Al Qaeda and five worldwide cells – one of which had linkages to Brooklyn and has been referred to as the Brooklyn cell. I was told that Able Danger identified the Brooklyn cell – to include Mohammed Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers – more than one year before September 11, 2001. Additionally, I was informed of an effort to share specific information with the FBI about Al Qaeda in September 2000 – one year before 9/11 – and that three meetings for that purpose were abruptly cancelled hours before they were scheduled to take place.

This new information was startling, and caused me to review the 9/11 Commission Report to see if any reference to Able Danger was contained therein. Realizing that no such reference existed, I asked my Chief of Staff to personally contact the 9/11 Commission and determine if they had been briefed about Able Danger. On May 18, 2005, the 9/11 Commission Deputy Staff Director Chris Kojm said that the staff had been briefed, but had decided "not go down that route". Still puzzled that no mention of Able Danger had been made, I raised this question with 9/11 Commissioner Tim Roemer during a meeting in my office on May 23, 2005. He told me that he had never been briefed on Able Danger. 9/11 Commissioner John Lehman said the same thing during a lunch on June 29, 2005. He expressed dismay and suggested that I pursue the issue further.

How could it be possible that two 9/11 Commission staffers received two briefs, by two different members of Able Danger, in two different countries, on the same subject, yet no such information was brought to the level of a Commissioner. One is left to wonder if there was a similar information sharing problem within the commission.

On June 27, 2005, dismayed by the fact that Able Danger was omitted from the 9/11 Commission Report, I took to the floor of the House of Representatives to outline the entire Able Danger story for my colleagues and the American people. In the weeks following that speech, I methodically briefed the Chairs of House Armed Services, Intelligence, Homeland Security and FBI Appropriations Oversight Committee.

The New York Times picked up the story in August and ran three straight days of stories. On each day, the 9/11 Commission changed their story.
• First, they said that they were never briefed.
• Second, they said that they were briefed and that there was never a mention of Mohammed Atta.
• Third, they said they were briefed, Atta was mentioned, but they found Able Danger to be 'historically insignificant".

As someone who had supported the creation of the 9/11 Commission and their recommendations, even though more then half were already recommended by the Gilmore Commission, I was incensed by this cavalier attitude. Along with my Chief of Staff, we pursued the operatives involved in Able Danger throughout the months of July and August. We identified five officials who confirmed the facts of Able Danger, as well as knowledge of massive data and materials tied to the effort. We identified an FBI agent who played a role in arranging meetings to share information on U.S. persons that were abruptly cancelled. We also identified a technician who did Able Danger analysis and an individual who admitted to destroying Able Danger data – up to 2.5 terabytes. This data contained information on U.S. persons with ties to terrorism that could have helped prevent 9-11 and possibly even be used to track terrorist movements today. The person who destroyed this data has also spoken about how Major General Lambert, the J3 at U.S. Special Operations Command, was extremely upset when he learned that his data had been destroyed without his knowledge or consent.

On at least four occasions, I personally tried to brief the 9/11 Commissioners on: NOAH; integrative data collaboration capabilities; my frustration with intelligence stovepipes; and Al Qaeda analysis. However, I was never able to achieve more than a five-minute telephone conversation with Commissioner Tom Kean. On March 24, 2004, I also had my Chief of Staff personally hand deliver a document about LIWA, along questions for George Tenet to the Commission, but neither was ever used. [I would like to submit for the record.] Had the Commission been more thorough, I would have provided all of the leads that I recently pursued on my own. In the end I was ignored by the Commission. In fact, on the day the Commission provided the first brief for House Members in the Cannon Caucus Room, I attended and was the first to be recognized. I asked the Commission why they did not meet with Members who had worked intelligence and security issues prior to 9/11, and Lee Hamilton told me that "the Commission did not have time to meet with every Member who had information to share."

This story might have legs, after all, if the Senate finally lets the chips fall where they may...

Putin Meets Yankee Oilmen

Here's Kommersant's account of their tete-a-tete at Washington, DC's Madison Hotel:

Ten minutes after the press conference ended, Putin was meeting with oilmen in the Madison Hotel. He announced that meeting while still at the press conference. “We will speak about projects for American participation in the Russian economy, mainly in the energy sphere,” he said.

It was already known that there was only one project, the development of Shtokmanovskoe deposit. ExxonMobil chairman of the board Lee Raymond, president of that company Rex Tillerson, ConocoPhillips president James Malva, Chevron chairman of the board David O'Reilly and LUKOIL head Vagit Alekperov were waiting for the Russian president at the Madison. Alekperov was sitting in the center of the group and center of the conversation. They probably weren't asking how to cozy up to Putin. (It is unclear that Alekperov know the answer to that question.) I overheard that they were asking about how Alekperov found the U.S. market. (LUKOIL has 1400 gas stations in the United States.)

Putin was included in the conversation.

“Welcome to the United States!” Malva greeted him.

It would have been more logical to wish him a safe trip home, since he was leaving the country in an hour and a half, after three days there.

Putin began by mentioning that the U.S. receives only an insignificant portion of Russia's energy resources. “According to various estimates, oil is just over 2 percent. That means that petroleum products are 0.3 percent, and there has just been the first delivery of natural gas. Our potential is huge.”

He went talking about that potential as they moved to another room and left the journalists behind. The conversation lasted ten minutes, and was completely unnecessary. More interesting was that Putin then spoke with each oil executive one-on-one.

Malva and Alekperov went in together to see him. There was ten minutes scheduled for each of three meetings. That first meeting went according to schedule.

Malva recounted, “I told the Russian president about our investment projects in Russia. He approved.”

Malva has learned the rules of the Russian market well. We can be sure that, with an approach like that, ConocoPhillips has a bright future in Russia.

I asked Alekperov if they talked about the Shtokmanovskoe deposit.

“We are not involved with that project,” he said with a shrug. That meant no, obviously.

Tillerson from ExxonMobil spoke with Putin for no less than half an hour. He looked gloomy and refused to comment afterwards, but he might always look like that.

Chevron head O'Reilly, on the other hand, was jubilant on his way out of the meeting. He told Putin, and subsequently everyone else, how much his company suffered from the hurricane, which was practically not at all.

The second topic of their discussion was, finally, the Shtokmanovskoe deposit. “Mr. Putin made it clear that he knows that the Chevron Co. has passed the second stage of the competition, and is one of the five companies still in the running for the development of the deposit,” O'Reilly said.

Then they talked about energy security at the Big 8 summit coming up in St. Petersburg.

“We spoke in general terms about the general topic,” O'Reilly said.

He tried to get away after that, but he was asked if he thought Chevron was closer to developing the Shtokmanovskoe deposit after his conversation with Putin.

“Gazprom should answer that question,” he said, caught short. “Their management will make the decision. I only told the president that we are glad to have been chosen at the second stage.”

The only American journalists there asked who asked for the meetings, the executives or Putin.

“I don't know,” he said heavily. “But the fact that Mr. Putin wanted to meet speaks of his interested in the development of Russia as a country that can become a supplier of both natural gas and oil.”

He made a halfhearted attempt to leave again and was asked about Shtokmanovskoe again.

“It seems to me that you… that is, people, don't understand,” he said, beginning to show his annoyance. “That question will be decided by Gazprom.”

If he really thinks so, he, unlike his colleague from ConocoPhillips, has little future on the Russian market. But he probably isn't as uninformed as that.

I heard from sources in the Russian delegation that the discussion of the Shtokmanovskoe deposit with both O'Reilly and Tillerson was limited to only a few phrases. Putin made believe that he was more interested in how American strategic oil reserves were doing after the hurricane. And they gave him detailed descriptions of the technical specifications that allowed them to weather the hurricane.

That is, Putin is satisfied just to meet those people so far. The intrigue is just beginning.

How to Drink Vodka and Stay Sober

Konstantin's Russian Blog tells you how to do it.

Author's Guild Sues Google

The issue is Google Print, according to the Washington Post:

A Google spokesman said the company regretted that The Authors Guild had chosen to sue rather than continue discussions.

"Google Print directly benefits authors and publishers by increasing awareness of and sales of the books in the program," Google said in a statement. "Only small portions of the books are shown unless the content owner gives permission to show more."

A year ago Google began working with five of the world's libraries -- at Harvard, Oxford, Stanford, the University of Michigan and the New York Public Library -- to make large parts of their book collections searchable on the Web.

The action by the 86-year-old Authors Guild is part of a push by the organization to roll back efforts by Web sites to make the contents of books freely available online.

In a related case, the group has been seeking for a decade to force online publishers from New York Times Co. to Amazon.com to pay royalties to writers whose stories appear in online databases without their consent.

In August Google said it planned to temporarily scale back plans to make the full text of copyrighted books available on its Internet site.

I've used Google Print, and liked it, yet the question is whether Google Print is actually harming authors or helping them. In the end, I imagine the Author's Guild and Google will come up with some ASCAP or BMI type of royalty scheme, based on click-through counts. All this can be worked out, I'm sure, using digital technology. It's only money...

Department of Homeland Stupidity

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for this link to Michelle Malkin's column on the latest cronyism caper to come out of the Bush administration.